This Is So Damn Unfair

The hideout, after Asha had gone.

Just in case, Nahan—still wearing the face of Ian Red—set about sorting through everything he had gained.

First, the Artifact Guaranteed Enhancement Ticket.

"This one's going on the Ring of Iaso. No question."

Even now, the Ring of Iaso was what kept him from dying under anything short of the worst. And if he used the ticket and pushed it all the way to Ex-rank?

Even if the worst comes crashing down, I, at least, ought to survive.

He had a few other uses in mind as well, but he wouldn't be able to trust any of them until he had felt the effects for himself after the enhancement.

"First, let's look at the other rewards I can check in a hurry."

Muttering to himself, Nahan's next choice was the memories of the Black Wolf members.

The false information that had once been displayed was gone. In its place, a status window with every member registered.

"Black Wolf's still in progress, and Luna's finished.... Peter and Casler? Peter got mentioned now and then. Hmm. These two are showing as locked because I haven't met them yet?"

It was a reasonable enough theory. And yet—

"Then why Lactea?"

A hole opened in it at once, which meant it wasn't the whole answer either.

Fretting over it now didn't seem likely to produce one, so he decided that was enough of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the rewards for the moment and called up the status windows he had set aside, one after another.

First, the crimson system window that had surfaced the instant he cleared the main scenario.

He had already expected as much.

Thrashing to stay alive as Black Wolf had changed a great many things from the original. Among what Nahan knew of that story, some pieces had very likely warped into shapes nothing like what they had been.

But they should change.

The ending of the original Babylonia was a bad ending in which everyone was made unhappy.

Twist the original toward a happy ending. And, at the same time, watch the original's information change beneath his feet. Only if those two stayed meshed together could he keep his advantage in knowledge and still arrive at a happy ending.

Of the fifteen episodes that used to exist, what's left comes to... six?

And even among those, the pillars of the late, central incidents—the Gutter Rats, Viscount Gaspel, and the rest—were already gone.

So the incidents still waiting are probably four.

The Night of the Fanatics. Heaven, Earth, Darkness, and Light. The Demonkin Assault. All-Out War.

He had already set the remaining incidents down in order, and the bad ending bearing down on them was named the Fanatics' Uprising.

The next one is definitely the Night of the Fanatics.

A textbook cliché: part of the order that worshiped the Goddess Aria would turn out to be fanatics serving some other something.

Cliché or not, this place had become Nahan's reality, and worries of every kind couldn't help but crowd in ahead of him.

If I don't want to die, I have to do it.

He let out a sigh, as if there were no helping it.

Anyway.

What remained at the end of all that sorting was a single last thing: the main quest—Hanryang and Cheon Il-hong.

"Enhance the Ring of Iaso first. Then I'll take my time and look through the rest, one by one."

So saying, Nahan finally flopped back onto the grimy bed.

"This is brutal. Brutal...."

For a moment he missed the days when he had been a mercenary captain who knew nothing at all. But—

"Well, still.... it's better than dying without knowing a thing."

Comforting himself with that, Ian Red let his eyes slip slowly shut.

"...Ah, but...."

What kind of contract had Black Wolf made with the goddess, that it seemed to be following him around and helping him?

It's a contract between the two of them, so why me? A contract at all? And with a goddess, no less? Is there even anyone around I could ask?

He turned it over and over, but there was no way to know. In the end Nahan opened his eyes again and sat up.

"...Rest later. Move now."

When his head was a mess, he at least had to move his body.

"First...."

The Ring of Iaso.

With a click, he set the ring he had drawn out down on the floor and took the ticket-shaped guaranteed enhancement pass in his right hand.

"If I just hold it up to the thing, that ought to work, right?"

Wondering whether the back might have instructions written on it, he gave the ticket a flutter—and then, a light tap. The golden ticket brushed the wrist of his left hand and slipped on past.

In the next instant—

A brilliant light burst forth.

From his left wrist.

"You son of a—!! No, wait—!!"

He snatched at the ticket, but it was already gone. In a panic he strained to tear the equipment off, and then—

"Gyaaah!! What the hell is this thing now!?"

A roar detonated inside his skull, and at the same moment something like a spirit body seeped into him.

"Ghk— shut u—"

"Guh— m-my head's gonna split—"

A thunderous three-cheer, soaked in glory, and then it was over.

"Ah, this is seriously so damn unfair...."

He dropped where he stood.

Which was why he only learned it after the fact.

"Sh-shut up, it's loud, so just—be quiet...."

"You f—...."

Thump.

That one more noisy companion had been added to his side.

The County of Gardner.

Black Wolf's assault had left it a wreck, but Hestia, returned alive, had restored it to its former majesty in a short span of time.

For all the vastness of the grounds, the buildings and the mansion had been raised with practicality in mind. On the mansion's highest floor, in the lord's office—where only the Gardner direct line and those the head himself acknowledged were permitted to come and go—a meeting was in full swing.

The matter at hand was the party to be held the next day.

"Rohan. Anything else we still need to prepare?"

"Nothing, my lord."

"You've worked hard."

They were just entering the final stage of it when Hestia, silent all the while, opened her mouth.

"The party must be canceled."

A small voice, and a clear one. It went straight into the ear of everyone in the office.

"Hestia. I understand how you feel, but."

Flustered, Balkan glanced toward the head—Tehelan Gardner—and was just reaching to take her hand when Tehelan stopped him and asked,

"The reason?"

"Because it is dangerous."

"Go on."

No sooner had the short exchange passed than Hestia unfolded a creased sheet of paper wide.

"We have already been attacked twice, and both times we were routed. By criminals who did not even number five."

What was written there was information on Black Wolf, and on the state of the Empire.

"I grant that seeking to restore Gardner's tarnished image by holding a banquet is a worthy attempt. But what if it merely hands them a pretext to attack this place once more?"

"Don't you worry, Hestia! If those bastards come again, then this brother of yours will—!"

"You let them get away in the end, didn't you. Father did. You did. Even with the Hero himself present."

Chestnut eyes, shining with a steady calm.

"Th-that's...."

"I am not trying to reproach you. I was the one taken first, and I hardly distinguished myself either."

"Uh, th-thank—"

"Please, have this. Jerky. I prepared it for you, Brother."

"Oh! Thank you, Hestia!"

Chomp, chomp—and in a single stroke she had turned Balkan's attention aside. Hestia looked to Tehelan again.

"I do understand. Gardner is the greatest shield guarding the Empire. If we fail to recover our fallen name, the demonkin beyond the front and the corrupt nobles alike will take us for easy prey and begin to run wild."

She was right.

After the first assault, Gardner's reputation had fallen to the dirt, and in the immediate wake of the second it had sunk into the earth altogether. Fortunately they had succeeded in driving the attackers off, and through one rumor and another the tarnished name was slowly being won back.

On that momentum—on the momentum of honor recovering quickly—they had meant to open a banquet and set a firm period at the end of it.

Only then could they go on serving as the Empire's greatest deterrent. Only then could they aid His Majesty the Emperor in holding those people down.

Tehelan, his face as expressionless as ever, asked her in return.

"Knowing that, why do you still ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠oppose it?"

"Because it is a double-edged sword."

Black Wolf had been put down by the Hero's party and by Gardner, and Gardner, as if unafraid of them, had opened a banquet. If that banquet ended in success, a rumor of this sort would spread.

But if—

"If Black Wolf takes this banquet for a provocation, and attacks us again during it, or after...."

"We would lose our strength. Greatly. So greatly that we could never rise again."

Tehelan finished the words Hestia had let trail away, gave a short breath of a laugh, and lifted his head.

"The banquet proceeds as planned."

"My lord!"

"Tsk. So much fear.... Enough. I will add the explanation myself. Everyone but Hestia, out."

"Yes, my lord!"

With that ringing answer, Gardner's warriors filed out, and at last only Tehelan and Hestia remained in the office.

"My lord!"

"It is fine. Set the honorific aside."

"No! Until you withdraw your decision, this is how I will speak to you!"

"Hestia."

He turned his head toward her and asked, his face grave.

"Does your foolish father frustrate you?"

"What are you—!!"

"I know it as well. The men of Gardner have been fools for generations. All this time has passed, and still we are like idiots."

"My lord!!"

His piece said, Tehelan stroked the shield the progenitor had wielded, set there at his side.

"But that is why we were not afraid. Our thoughts were short. We looked only at what lay just before our noses, and so neither wounds nor death—nothing—frightened us."

A good head leaves the body at ease, and a good body leaves the head at ease.

"We Gardners have always had it easy, at least where the head is concerned.... And so I wanted to be the only one who suffered, and to protect all the rest. But."

A click.

"This once, it seems I must ask for your help, Hestia."

The moment Tehelan pressed the button, the fireplace turned, and a hidden space lay open. Hestia saw it, and understood at once.

"The H-Heavenly Shield...."

The heirloom of the Gardner family, indispensable to holding the front—the relic whose endlessly generated aura reinforced the barrier along the beast-line so that it would not fall—

"It is gone. Immediately after Black Wolf came through."

From the sight before her alone, Hestia grasped the whole of it.

"You provoked Black Wolf on purpose. Because the Heavenly Shield, at least, had to be recovered, no matter how."

Tehelan nodded.

The Heavenly Shield. The relic that did more than anything else to let House Gardner exist as a deterrent. For the present they were holding the line somehow, mixing what aura remained with Tehelan's own, but within a few days even that would fail.

If they did not recover the Heavenly Shield before the barrier went dark....

"War with the demonkin would begin again. So we must find it, by whatever means we have."

Even if Black Wolf had opened that vicious maw and chewed the shield down—

"We take it back, even if we must split that belly open to do it."

And so, the next day.

With Balkan's congratulatory address—if it could be called that—the banquet began.